Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
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Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#2dirtbag egalitarianism wins again
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#3Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no?
ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#4[flagged]
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#5[flagged]
Typical HN webdevery, doesn’t understand that more than one thing can be done a time.
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#6Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program
Not necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price.
A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price tags and customer tracking you could show different prices to different customers in-person. For example, when Alice goes to the eggs it could say $2 and when Bob goes to the eggs it could say $4. Then you just need to track the customer to the register to make sure you give them the price that was displayed. I believe the amazon "go" stores were doing the whole customer tracking thing so we already have the necessary tech demonstrated in real stores.
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#7Dude, this "surveillance pricing" is fucking bullshit. Good on them.
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#8Dude, this "surveillance pricing" is fucking bullshit. Good on them.
Hope you renewed your Prime membership because they're the worst offender.
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#9Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program
Not necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price. A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price…
i really doubt the downsides of adding that layer of complexity can compete with the upsides of surveillance pricing.
Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
#10Pricing will become increasingly adversarial. The Internet did too much to expose price differences to customers, so sellers are responding. Customers will need aggressive agents to price-shop on their behalf. Take hotel booking as one of the current nightmares of price visibility. Total price often isn't exposed until you show up at the hotel.